Long Walks.

I took some time driving around Lee's Summit after visiting Dan, Jon and Dennis. I was pretty tired, but so much in the town had changed that I had to go looking at some of the places I used to haunt. Naturally, I passed near where my old collections job was and I had to go see. Did the place get leveled? Was it still there and open? I drove up and there was a corporate sign for another company there, but the building was just how I left.

I had forgotten certain parts of it, which I started recalling in vivid detail - things on the inside I remembered as I looked on the outside. I couldn't stay very long, I started to get a cross of anger and low level fear just being there. I just couldn't be there without thinking how much going through that job affected me even today. I feel like I was abused by it and forever changed, and I wanted to do something permanent and destructive.

So I left. I guess I may never settle things with that particular demon.

Arguing at Reflections

I am in Kansas City, and I am cold.


I'm here for a sort of "make up" visit, having missed going back to the Midwest and see my family over Christmas. The weekend after my birthday seemed like a good time, and the tickets by plane were cheaper than driving. I always forget that it's not really the cold of places with a real winter that gets to me, it's the constant cold. I can spend a couple hours out in zero windchill with minimal problems, but the uninterrupted cold toes I had when I lived around here were just godawful.  The cold just permeates everything and while you're not freezing, it's just relentless.

Right now I'm breaking a little bit from getting writing done to reflect about my birthday and whatnot. I turned 32 this year, and so much has happened in the past couple years with my life that I think I should probably get another tattoo. That's a leap of logic that makes sense to me, I think: tattoo = important milestone. I didn't do much in Austin for the birthday except a dinner at Treehouse with potentially too many people. You just can't speak with everyone at a 14 person dinner like you could if you had everyone over at your house lounging around. I got a bunch of various alcohols from my friends (and a model gun), and Kim sprang to help pay for the tickets to get me to KC. Not a bad haul overall. After bringing home the bottles and subsequently getting a few more on Thursday when people came over for the tabletop, I realized none of them were the shitty, nameless "please get me drunk quickly" sort of things I used to drink. And hey, the bottles themselves just look neat sitting on the shelf.

So I think, with that revelation, I realized I do actually see myself as an adult now. Not in all respects, but for a long time during my twenties, it was very hard for me to grasp how other people could possibly see me as one. I didn't feel very adult, and when people looked at me, I got the sense that they agreed with that. I don't think the past couple of years have really changed me a great deal, and the fact I dress a little nice isn't really the catalyst for this. I think it's just a slow, steady change - the kind you don't really notice until something makes you.

It's the sort of thing that makes me realize now is really the time I should be getting things I want in life done. I always felt previously not that I'm bad at things, but more like I wasn't somehow ready to do things like actually publish a novel or try to do a million other things. I just didn't feel like I was on the kind of "level" one should be to get these things done. It wasn't an age thing so much as the fact I know I'm intelligent and talented in a myriad of ways, I just always felt like there were so many people more intelligent, more prepared, and more practiced at things and I wasn't ready to contend with them. But the more I get through life, the more I realize that it's not true in a lot of situations. People are seen to have authority, experience, and merit because ... well, they throw their hat in the ring, and little else. I talk to people about politics and they have no real grasp on a lot of ideas but others see them as very learned on the subject. I used to reconcile that by thinking that I simply didn't have the whole story, but more and more I'm willing to believe that I do. And that story is sad. SO sad.

This is the year, I think. Not magically "my year" by some weird appointment, but just the year I'm ready to recognize that I did make it into adulthood, and now it's time to do something with that. Working with AEG again for the past year has really helped with this, I think. Getting back in the regular habit of writing and being relentlessly confronted with the fact that folks with much less talent, care, and maturity than myself get very, very far in all of this.

I dunno what tatt I'm gonna get, but it's on the list. The same list that says "Seth you have gone to the gym about seven times in the past couple of weeks, get the fuck back to it." The holidays and work load were fucked up enough to knock me off my routine, getting sick made it worse, and traveling isn't helping, but I definitely feel the difference. Time to get back to it, all of it, it seems.

52 Weeks In Review

2012 was not the worst year, but it's definitely a contender. I lost family pretty much right off, and it seemed like a lot of my friends were stricken with the same plague of misfortune and loss. Because my birthday is so close to the start of the year, I thought what while year 30 was about finally getting on my own feet as an adult, year 31 would be furthering that and taking on things that meant really shaping my own life. But because the years of our lives are not compact television series seasons, things from before still kept screwing with me, too.

Medical bills (which I still have to cope with) made a bad year worse. I've had to sink a few thousand dollars into the house and Jeep (each) to keep things going. There's more to come with that, as it'll be the new thing I drag into the new year. My back/shoulder/head thing I think is progressing in the medical sense, not the positive one. Things with Kim remain difficult. I didn't finish the book, yet again.

But, I met some new friends. I got back to freelance writing. I did start pushing my life the way I want it to go in some meaningful ways. I think year 32 is going to be more of that, and even if it isn't, I'm ready for the fight.

I don't have a lot else to say right now because I went to bed at 4 and woke up about 8, so my head's still a little fuzzy, but I wanted to put something down while I was thinking about it. Went to the Side Bar and did the "downtown New Year's" thing for the first time in Austin. Not too bad, give or take your typical "people drink too much on noes" stuff. Stories for the kids, I guess. Hopefully I'll put it all down so it doesn't evaporate forever.

Half Measures Are For Weenies

I may have decided to challenge myself to finish my book at the same time that my current writing gig with AEG hit me with a new assignment. And I decided to take on a simultaneous, new project with AEG as well. Also I still have a full time day job, so it's not like I suddenly sprang free time. I'm not too sure, in retrospect, what drove me to do all of this without thinking about it all together. But there it is. For someone who was previously upset that he couldn't find a decent part time job, you could possibly say I have gained what is called the embarrassment of riches. But the first AEG job pays not so great, and sparsely, and the new one doesn't pay at all. I took it mostly because the time investment seemed low and I wanted to see about putting my name on another project that has a possibility of taking off. The book, of course, isn't paid either.

So really, no riches. Just embarrassment, I suppose.

Thanksgiving this year went off pretty well. Kim and I put together a pretty impressive dinner that had started off as a plan for six no-local-family Austin refugees (including ourselves). In the end, it was a dozen folks that we managed to accommodate without skimping on place settings or food. We watched UT beat A&M in the last game that both colleges would be in the same conference. I write this and still wonder why I even gave a fuck at the time. I think Austin's weird fixation with football is finally seeping in to my skin. It's taken six years to get this minor hold on me, but I expect like most diseases, the rate of diffusion through the victim will be exponential.

This weekend was then just Kim and I sitting, eating leftovers, and playing through the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO stress test. It was... a lot of playing. I don't see myself really playing for literally 12-14 hours a day once the  game is actually released, but I'm trying to save money both for my previous bills and forthcoming Christmas stuff, so it seemed like a good idea to just stay in all weekend. I had been in a previous Beta weekend, and Republic Trooper is still my favorite. I'm a little torn on a few things, such as what side to play and what class, but there will be a Trooper in there for certain.

We went with Nikki to a few Black Friday sales, notably the Round Rock outlets and Half Price Books. It was nice getting ridiculously underpriced clothes to replace some things that needed replacing, and seeing some books to give as gifts. It was especially nice to do this at 2pm when all the murderous, rampaging hordes of folks shopping for deals much like tribes shopped for land had passed.

I'll be heading back to KC for Christmas. I'm not sure if it'll be odd going alone or not yet. Probably.

All that icing and all that cake...

So the Occupy movement has been something that's been taking up a lot of my rhetorical time - that is, my time where I speak about things, not time that is... somehow theoretical. I've been pretty calm, all things considered, and there are many things to consider. The reaction to Occupy has been largely an exercise in watching confirmation bias drive many people to say hurtful, hateful, and irrational things all in the name of sticking it to (insert "the man" or "those jobless hipsters" as appropriate here). In the middle of all this, I've tried to commit myself to the Sisyphean effort of remaining calm and trying to speak to people who had forcefully set themselves against the movement, and cajole those who were losing sight of the actual problem back into more useful thought and action.

Today I kind of lost my shit. I didn't lose it so much as angrily begin flinging it around at anyone who dared get in my path. I could cite some excuses - and I will - but I will first say that I'm not too proud of how I handled myself. I believe that some people really needed to have someone finally get in, stop being polite, and blatantly say, "You are wrong. We do not need to be tactful or meek about this - you are wrong and you are misinformed." But I've been sick, and I was tired, and I hadn't slept well, perhaps the sun got in my eyes and I slept on my hand, who knows. I woke up in a shit mood, saw what was going on last nigh, and something in my dam of patience snapped.

It wasn't just that this was happening; honestly, it was one of the few logical conclusions to the Occupy camp in New York. The problem I was having was with the reactions I was seeing. Police officers were being used as a military to conduct unlawful actions against Americans: arresting protestors who complied, forcibly destroying recordings and denying press access, taking private property belonging to the protestors and destroying it, cutting off the airspace above to the media, and so on. Was the occupation illegal? That is actually up for debate, as the NY courts have begun fighting back and forth over that question while an order to allow protestors back in to the park languishes. But even if it was, look at what happened, and then witness Americans cheering gleefully at the treatments of their fellow citizen. Why is this ok? Simply put, it's always okay when laws and rights are conveniently ignored in order to expedite punishment of those who don't agree with us. This is the rule of the day - what Bush did and what Obama does, however similar, is either heroic or demonic depending on which end of the political spectrum you sit yourself on.

This is a fiction that far too many people have happily eaten up and clamored for seconds. The Occupy protestors are hippies and/or trust fund babies bored with their lives and trying to pretend their existences mean something. So many right-wing media outlets realized that ignoring the protest didn't mean anything, so the narrative quickly shifted - let's talk about how disorganized they are, how shiftless and worthless they are as human beings. Please for the love of God, let's just not talk about the actual issue at hand. And, again, so many were happy to take that direction and run with it as if they were scoring a touchdown for (insert political or religious idol here) itself.

The truth of the matter is this - what happened over the past decade in regards to the destructive and corrupt relationship between political power and financial regulation was a crime committed against America as a country. Executives at many levels across several powerful firms perpetrated a fraud that no intelligent businessman would have attempted, if they had the long term interests of their company in mind. They soaked up countless millions, even billions, of dollars that did not belong to them through misdirection and blatant lies, making bets they would never be able to cover. When the bet came due, when a company must finally be held accountable for the failed risks it took, the government stepped in and saved them all. Who will pay the price for the misconduct of these few? Everyone but them. To these privileged few, the idea that they could lose was an insult. They were largely born into money, and they will always have money, and the concept that this could change was laughable at best or otherwise simply a conspiracy. As far as they're concerned, they have a right to their lifestyles and wealth, not any need to earn and maintain it.

So instead of feeling the repercussions of what they had done - actually playing by the rules of the capitalist philosophy they all pretend to be such devotees of - the backlash fell to the public. Banks were bailed out. Companies were saved by the government. And in turn, these companies, in order to even out their bottom line, fired employees, stopped lending, hiked up fees, and squeezed every rock they could find for some cash - as long as that rock wasn't somewhere on their own property. And when the economy froze due to unemployment and a lack of moving cash, these same people shrugged helplessly and said, "oh, sorry, it's just how things are now" as if they had no hand in it and no power to make it otherwise.

Above: "Shiftless hippie bums".

But instead of worrying about this, we have people who snicker to each other that Occupy Wall Street has no clear direction (nevermind the fact that the living document known as the OWS Manifesto can be found easily by just Googling the completely obscure phrase "OWS Manifesto"), or that these people are just shiftless hippie bums who want to end the American way of life. Why? Why do we bother with this? Because, simply put, partisan hatred in this country has taken over every aspect of life. Every decision you make, everything you like or dislike, is now considered on part of the political spectrum. Do you drive a truck? You must be a conservative. Only liberals like Muse. And so on. In the middle of the rabble, the message is not only getting lost, it's getting actively drowned out and distorted, because so many people know that it's a message that the average citizen should not and will not ignore.

I would usually puff out my centrist, more-enlightened-than-thou chest and now admonish the other side, if this were any other issue. "They're all wrong, to some degree," is the chic political line of thought these days, and in some regards it's true for OWS. Occupy has done a great deal of damage to itself, and there are those within the movement that I, and many rational people should disagree with. End capitalism? Pass. Abolish all banks? You have no idea what you're talking about. Forgive all student debt and/or home loans? The damage that would cause is beyond what you can apparently understand. But beyond that, the basic principle - that the government has now enshrine the idea that reward is privatized to a select few and risk is now socialized to the whole country - is right. If you do not agree with this, if you want to spend your time smirking and rolling your eyes at the people, then you are wrong. Flat out.

This is a nuanced issue, to be sure, but there is very definitely a right side. If you want to waste your time counting the minor infractions of the movement, as if such a movement could ever be without people who act in such a manner, then that's your choice. And it's the wrong choice. I quoted this earlier, but it remains appropriate: Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." If all you can talk about is how these hippies were asking for it, or how you heard a story about how some guy broke a sink, you've made your choice. 


Went to bed and didn't see,
why every day turns out to be
a little bit more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read.
But God who'd wanna be?
God who'd wanna be such an asshole?

Wherein I Get Angry At Pandas

So, I wanted to take some time to digest the information about Mists before I went full tilt on it. My initial reaction was not a mature, nuanced view, which I realized didn't make for a really fair way to look at it. After taking some time to look over the information, my reaction is still almost universally negative about the whole thing, and I considered keeping it to myself because I didn't wanna be that guy bitching about a game I quit and acting like everyone is dumb for liking it. But honestly, I don't really care if other people like it or not. It's a video game. I thought Grand Theft Auto was pretty terrible, so I don't have any illusion that my viewpoint is correct and sacred here. With that in mind...

1. Fucking Pandarens.

There seems to be a lot of whining on the Internet about how talking pandas somehow makes the game kiddie territory now. Nevermind the singing sunflower, or the complete clownification of Goblins, the constant pop in-jokes, or the overall cartoonishness of the game in general. Nope, pandas are what did it. I think that's kind of ridiculous, mostly for the aforementioned reasons, but because there are a great many reasons to hate Pandarens without making up crap. I understand the race was was already part of the setting for some time, so the inevitable comparisons to Kung Fu Panda seem unfair. But look at what they did - they took the coincidental similarities, and just leaned into the curve. The folks at Blizzard really don't care about the Warcraft setting anymore as an actual property, and are willing to whore any little bit of it out as a quick joke or "clever" reference for a couple chuckles. You just cannot take the setting seriously anymore. It is not a fantasy game, it's a chatroom with attacks.

2. Talent Revamp

So when Blizzard slimmed down the talent trees for Cataclysm, players by the thousands were telling the company, "This is a bad move. With so few choices and this many points, there will be clear and obvious builds for each spec. Builds will not vary at all. It makes the points effectively irrelevant." So now, Blizzard seems to be bemoaning how specs became so cookie cutter, and they're sighing about it as if they have no idea what went wrong. Oh, how did we get to all these cookie cutter specs! How could we have ever foreseen this!

Worse than the blatant stupidity of the above is the rampant ignorance of the solution "Oh, I know, let's give everyone six choices per class." The point, apparently, is to make the choices effectively meaningless. You now are FORCED to be effectively a cookie cutter of someone of your same spec and class, with a couple of flavor abilities that don't really factor in a great deal. This... solves the problem. Somehow.

3. Another Tank/DPS/Heal hybrid.

Morons. You can't even get Paladin right after this long, so I feel extremely bad for anyone who picks "paladin but with, you know... asian shit."

4. Also, The Island

As I said before, I accept that Panderia was already in the setting. However, their "sell" of it is like we're in the fucking 70s where everyone thinks the MYSTIC EAST is a land of UNTAPPED MYSTERY and MYSTERIOUS KICKING OF SHIT and maybe some weird MYSTERY. The only thing I could think is this -



Senor Chang is watching you because of this bullshit. He will destroy you.


5. It Appears They Just Don't Care

I don't really care about the pokemon pets in the way some people do. It doesn't bother me that they're adding the shit in, it's just bothersome rolled in with everything else. This is all B- or even C-Squad shit at this point. These are all obvious ploys to just keep an old game alive through some cute toys and ignoring the fact that at the end, the actual game itself is the exact same. Really, it strikes me as someone who is embarrassed and trying to do their best to sort've apologize for what's going on. "Yeah, this is still a game about collecting 20 bear asses, heh, sorry about that. But now your Pinchy can fight their Hatchling, so that helps, right?"

There's definitely a good amount of panderin (hahahahah I'm totally not the 5,00th person to make that joke) to get players to re-sub. As someone who quit out of sheer apathy for the game, it's not even like an abusive ex trying to apologize and get you to come back, baby, it'll be better this time. It's more like a manic, psycho ex that's trying to tell you she totally took some classes at cooking and can do the splits now so c'mon give it another shot. And since I like to play games for the actual game immersion as well as the company (in the context of multiplayer games), all I can think of is the next time I wipe to Lord Evilfux, people will be battling their pets for lolz while people rez. And I think, "No, I believe it's time I dated someone a little closer to my age, sorry."

Frankenstein's Ishiken

So I wanted a place to ramble a bit about my current Frankenstein's Monster - a Void shugenja for the L5R RPG. I'm running a campaign now that just switched over to being a magistrate dealie. The players were previously an all-Crab party dealing with Crab lands being overrun by the current storyline problems, and I decided to drop a Black Scroll on their laps for a laugh. Anyway, that's wrapped up and they decided that though they enjoyed their first characters, they wanted to branch out some and I offered to start a newer campaign with characters that were possibly the descendents, students, associated of the previous characters. These characters would be given 90xp (+10 if they were players from the previous campaign).

I was talking to Elo-Brian about this, and he was jiving with the thematic flavor of the Phoenix - stoic masters of ridiculous power that they are reluctant to use. He also wanted to make a shugenja, so I decided to talk to him a little about what each element was good for. Now, at the time, I was still sort've in the mind set that Air had some of the best utility spells for social settings for things such as divination and manipulation. I told him that realistically, the biggest toolbox is going to be a Void shugenja with strong access to Air spells (either through a Air affinity or a high Air ring), BUT, I had already seen about 100 Void/Air and Void/Fire shugenja. What I had always wanted to see in play was a Void/Water shugenja, for various reasons.

Brian was kind enough to humor me and I explained to him what he needed to do, statwise to get this guy going. First, you have to go with the Isawa school, because it's the only one that allows you to pick any Affinity (so it's the only way to get a Void affinity), but you also get no deficiency. That is super important and I'll get to that in a second. Second, you need to pick a family that gives you a water-related bonus. Thankfully, the Agasha somehow get a Perception bonus despite being a Fire shugenja family. But even if you don't like the Agasha, you can pick a Shiba and be a super weird exception to the family of bushi (they also get Perception).

Since the Isawa school grants you +1 Int, you have a pretty quick jump to 3 Water, 3 Fire, and 3 Void (this wouldn't work at rank 1). Brian opted to go ahead and hit 4 Void, which is a pretty big XP dump, but for this character it really works since you can abuse the holy fuck out of your Void Ring and Void Points. The only problem is that it leaves a very small amount of XP for skills, since you have to blow 6 on the Ishiken-do advantage. Even after recovering 10 points of disadvantages, skills are gonna suffer a little. So really the choice was blow 24 points on Void 4 or have 24 points for skills. It's something of a toss up, since you're going to have a shit ton of Void to blow when it matters and some spells to help.

So this is where you play with the mechanics. Due to the need to have a good Water Ring for some ridiculous water combos later, you have a good Strength. Due to getting +1 Int from the school and wanting to push up another Ring to have another strong element to cast, you now have 3 Agility. You have now accidentally stumbled upon a competent melee shugenja if you focus on disabling and not killing (which, incidentally, fits with the Phoenix pacifist stance). Bo of Water gives you a free raise for knockdowns (and you'll get another at Staves 5, making every attack a possible knockdown), and with a 3 Agi and 3 Str, you can now get people into a grapple with Jiujutsu and maintain it relatively consistently.

Of course, bushi will have higher Agi or Str (if not both), but they don't get an infinite goddamned Void pool, now do they?

This is where the spells come in and really make the damned thing ridiculous. I told Brian he had his starting spells (3, 2, 1, and 1 of any given element), then three he would choose as spells "gained" after his character's rise to Rank 2 (so any three spells he could cast at Rank 2), and then his 3 Rank 2 spells. It's important to note that with no Deficiency, your potential spell list becomes goddamned amazing. But you also have Importune, which is the ultimate "I have some downtime, so now I can cast any spell" mechanic.

So for spell selection, I suggested -

Rank One Character Creation Spells - 3 Void, 2 Water, 1 Fire, 1 Earth

3 Void (Rank 1 or 2): Drawing the Void, which allows you to cast a Rank 1 spell and recover 3 Void Points (given his stats), or 4 if you're feeling froggy and Raise three times (twice, due to getting a Free Raise on any Void spell). Touch the Emptiness, which is a nice quick combat spell that confers the statusfuck of Daze. Altering the Course, letting you blow as many Void Points per roll as you like. Which is kind of ridiculous especially when combined with Drawing the Void, which allows you to temporarily have more Void Points than your actual Ring.

2 Water (Rank 1): Bo of Water, for a good standby weapon that will eventually turn into Excalibat. Path to Inner Peace, the standard healing spell. Yup.

1 Fire (Rank 1): This was a toss up between Fires of Purity, which deals damage whenever the target attacks or is attacked, causing a ridiclous amount of damage overall, or Never Alone, which is sort've like a Bless that works even out of combat.

1 Earth (Rank 1): Earth's Stagnation, making one or more targets useless piles of inaccurate, slow moving non-threats.

Then three spells he could cast at Rank 2 (So Ranks 1-3 of Void, Rank 1-2 of anything else):

Moment of Clarity (Void Rank 3): The ability to just assume Rank 4 (or higher, as your Void increases) in a skill has endless usefulness. Combined with the ability to blow a shit ton of Void on a single skill roll (per the previous Void combo) means you can essentially make master-level rolls on any one skill roll a couple times a day.

Kharmic Intent (Void Rank 3): You share your Void pool with another target, letting them draw from your ridiculous Void, and/or you can use their points, which you will put to potentially better use.

Rejuvenating Vapors (Water Rank 2): Shugenja can cast a number of spells per Element per day equal to their Ring in that Element. They then get a pool of "any spell" slots equal to their Void Ring per day. This spell will refresh that once per day.

Reversal of Fortunes (Water Rank 1): For three rounds, a target simply rolls twice on any given roll and picks the better roll. There is no point at which this is not handy.

Soul of Stone (Earth Rank 1): This grants a huge bonus to avoid mental coercion and manipulation, which will be pretty handy for a socially driven campaign.

Benten's Touch (Air Rank 2): As mentioned, this will be a very talky-centric campaign, what with the law and all. Giving out 1k1+2 to social skill rolls is going to be damn useful.

Now, that's a pretty standardized toolbox for a shugenja to have. This doesn't even abuse one of the most abusable Water spell combos in the game Silent Waters, which allows you to store a spell on yourself to activate later as a Free action, and Sympathetic Energies, which is already ridiculous when used with Silent Waters, but doubly good since most of the Void's best spells are self-only buffs. Being able to move spell effects off yourself to others is great, and then you realize that Importune, which allows you to get temporary access to any spell you could cast but haven't learned is a skill roll. Since you have no deficiency, the spells you can choose from to Importune are much more than most Shugenja. And you can have all the Void in the world to spend on that roll.

So you can potentially drop two spells - I suggest Bo of Water and probably Soul of Stone, to get those. But without Bo of Water, you can spend less time worrying about combat (sticking to Jiujutsu), and free up some skill points you would have put in Staves.

I'm not sure which setup I like better, but I'm personally leaning towards the latter one. I'm probably going to end up making this character as well and playing it in a game Kim is running.